To Wii game developers
Gather around, because I am about to reveal to you how to be successful in making games for the Wii (or, indeed, for any system, but for the Wii most of all).
Let us begin with a simple listing of the four key rules that one must follow in making a Wii game, if you want that game to be a success. These four key rules will be elaborated on further below, but for now, let’s put it in terms simple enough for even the slowest amongst you to understand.
- Set a reasonable budget for the game. Don’t skimp - you may be able to eke out some sales from a low quality game, but you’ll see far greater returns if you give the game a bigger budget.
- Give the game a reasonable development timeframe. 2 months is never sufficient for a game.
- Advertise and hype the game until everyone in the appropriate demographic knows about it. Make sure the advertising and hype are appropriately targetted.
- Set quality requirements, and if a game isn’t of sufficient quality at the end of its development timeframe, delay the game. A bad game that is delayed can become good. A bad game that is released immediately will always be a bad game.
These four key rules are essential to success on the Wii. These same four key rules can be seen to be applied to almost every game Nintendo makes, and this, not Nintendo’s popularity, is the key to Nintendo’s first-party success on the Wii, on the DS, and in anything else they do. Even Nintendo have their flops, occasionally they produce a game that fails significantly on one of the key points, but their greatest games are always controlled by these rules.
Let’s delve a little deeper, now, and see some evidence supporting these key rules, as well as going into greater detail on the workings of these rules.
First, we have the Budget key. A game made with $10,000 might be able to pull $20,000 profit, but a game with a $2 million budget has a far greater chance of pulling over $10 million in profit. This is because a better quality game is generally a more popular game, given equal advertising and hype. This rule scales with the genre and the platform, meaning that a game made with $1 million on the Wii for a casual puzzle game is probably a little more than necessary, and significantly more than necessary if the game is for Wiiware, but such a budget would be insufficient for an epic RPG game.
This key is essential, because without sufficient funds, the developers must cut corners, resulting in a lower quality game. This can be seen by comparing Activision’s Call of Duty 3 with Ubisoft’s Far Cry Vengeance. Both were launch titles, both were FPS shooters, both used the Wii remote for point-and-shoot gaming. However, Call of Duty 3 sold 370,000 units, whereas Far Cry Vengeance managed a meagre 60,000 units.
So where’s the difference? Neither game was particularly well advertised. The only other factor is quality. However, as both were launch titles, neither had extended development timeframes, nor did either of them get significant quality assurance. We can thus conclude that the difference lies in budgets. Call of Duty 3 for the Wii was one of a number of versions of the game, and across the versions, the game got a significant budget. Far Cry Vengeance, however, was one of a number of Ubisoft titles that were thrown at consumers with minimal budget, and thus the quality was far lower. Far Cry Vengeance is, to date, the 12th-lowest-rated Wii title, out of more than 210 games released so far. Call of Duty 3, on the other hand comes in at 82nd best.
This key, you see, is budget. Ubisoft have openly admitted to producing most of their Wii titles with meagre budgets, and thus they have found very weak profits from the system, just 10% of their total profit. This is the result of giving games insufficient budgets, and this is why Ubisoft games have, on the whole, been struggling.
Key 2 is timeframe. A game given a reasonable timeframe to be developed will come out better than one that is rushed, and a better game is a more popular game. This can be observed by examining a number of Wii launch titles, which people openly stated should have been delayed, as they were not ready for launch. These games invariably started development relatively late, and developers rushed the games out to make a deadline. A good example of this is Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, by Activision. This game had potential, but simply lacked any sort of polish – instead of being a popular game, the game flopped. It was not a bad game, in truth, but it required another 3 months or so to get it truly ready for release, 3 months which it did not receive.
In truth, the game didn’t do too bad, netting 270,000 sales in America, but this was in spite of decent pre-launch hype. However, the game could have done far better than it did. Another more recent title with this problem was Ubisoft’s Rayman Raving Rabbids 2. This game, following in the footsteps of the hugely popular launch title, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and had the potential to be an even better title than the first. However, development of the game didn’t even begin until after the first was released, which gave it less than a year to be created. This proved to be insufficient time, as the game contained less content than its predecessor, with only a couple of significant innovations to keep the game fresh. As such, in spite of releasing during the christmas period, with a bigger install base to work from than the original, the game didn’t sell quite as well as the original. This result is due to the game being rushed, and thus being a lower quality game – this is reflected in the game’s ratings, which were noticeably lower than those of its predecessor.
And so, we come to the most notable of the keys – advertising and hype. A game that people know about will do better than one they don’t know about; that’s a self-evident truth. As such, a game should be advertised and hyped in such a way that the target audience actually know the game exists. Furthermore, the advertising should go some way to showing why the target audience should buy the game.
This effect can be seen quite neatly with a number of games, but let us begin with Ubisoft’s Rayman Raving Rabbids series. This series has been under a state of constant hype since well before the first was released. It began with some funny little videos involving “facts” about bunnies, such as “Bunnies don’t like taking a bath“. Since then, there have been many videos and images of CG rabbids running around in the real world, doing various crazy things. As a result, the game was a hit with the core crowd, even though the game was weak on at least two of the other keys, and the game was designed with a more casual feel.
The game flopped on other platforms, which also demonstrates the importance of making a quality title. Even a heavily hyped game will flop if the quality isn’t there in sufficient amount. This is proving to be true of Ubisoft’s PS3 title, Haze. Hyped heavily, and advertised extensively, the game has already started a rapid drop in sales in the second week of it being out. This demonstrates that advertising and hype isn’t the only key. Had Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 had the quality there, in combination with the hype, it would have outsold the original by far – but the lack of quality meant that it didn’t perform any better, in spite of equal hype.
Hype – it’s what allowed Red Steel to sell over a million copies in spite of flawed controls and a relatively weak story. It’s what allowed Sonic and the Secret Rings to make nearly 1.4 million sales, and keeps Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games on top of sales charts. It’s what makes the lacklustre Mario Party 8 one of the best-selling titles, and it’s what makes Carnival Games such a popular game. It’s why LEGO Star Wars is selling so well on all platforms.
Lack of Hype – it’s why No More Heroes didn’t do as well as it could have. It’s what held Dewy’s Adventure, Elebits, Zack & Wiki, and Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 back from being million-sellers. It’s why NiGHTS and Super Swing Golf struggled, and why Nintendo’s own Battalion Wars II hasn’t even made 150,000 copies sold, yet. Without hype, the game will invariably struggle, as it must sell based almost solely on word-of-mouth advertising.
And this produces an effective segue to the final key, quality assurance. A game that isn’t up to scratch will always do poorly. You can hype it as much as you want, but without quality to back it up, sales of the game will drop rapidly following launch, leaving you with a game that promised the world, and gave little. Without quality, you don’t get the essential secondary form of hype, word-of-mouth advertising.
This form of advertising is driven by the consumer themselves. When a person buys, say, Mario Kart Wii, they enjoy it thoroughly, and recommend it to their Wii-owning friends. Those friends then buy the game, play it, and recommend it to THEIR Wii-owning friends, and so the chain goes. This chain works well irrespective of whether other forms of hype are applied or not, but the scale is far larger if backed with a proper hype machine.
Games that get this word-of-mouth advertising can be identified by their continued sales. Microsoft’s Halo 3, for instance, was hyped extensively (indeed, it was the most hyped game in history), whereas Activision’s Call of Duty 4 (for the 360 - the game also was released for the PS3) did not get much hype, relatively speaking. As such, at launch, Halo 3 broke sales records, seeing almost 4 million sales in the first week. However, sales of Halo 3 dropped relatively rapidly, whereas Call of Duty 4’s sales, which began with a more modest 1 million sales, has remained higher on the charts, and sales have been more consistent. As a result, Halo 3 has sold almost 8 million, while Call of Duty 4 has sold over 6 million on the 360 alone. Last week alone, Call of Duty 4 sold over 50,000 copies, whereas Halo 3 only sold 27,000 copies. If we add Call of Duty 4’s PS3 sales, we now find Call of Duty 4 outselling Halo 3 in total sales, with combined weekly sales almost four times that of Halo 3.
The effect is seen just as easily on the Wii. Both No More Heroes and Zack & Wiki have performed moderately well, in spite of little direct hyping of the games. This is because both games are high quality, and get the word-of-mouth sales bonus. Similarly, in spite of reviewers being critical of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the game continues to stay on top of the charts, at least in part due to word-of-mouth - it may not have been the best game, but it was a lot of fun. Similarly, Trauma Center: Second Opinion, a critically acclaimed game that received little hype, has still managed a respectable 530,000 copies sold, no doubt due mostly to word-of-mouth hype, driven by its high quality.
So there you have it - four keys, each of which is… well, key… to success on the Wii. All of the top-selling titles share these four keys, whether they are casual or core, Nintendo first-party or third-party, colourful or realistic, mature or kiddy. Games in the lower ranges of success are found to have most of these keys, but not all of them, thus showing that each key contributes in part to success on the Wii, with all four coming together to produce huge sales. This can be seen in Super Smash Bros Brawl – the game was given a huge budget, it had a decent timeframe to be created in, it was hyped as much as it could be reasonably hyped, and the game was delayed until the developer was truly satisfied that it was high quality.
The game is now at 3.7 million copies sold in the United States alone, and over 1.7 million in Japan. The game has yet to be released in Europe or Australia, but it is expected to sell just as well, if not better. Discounting Wii Sports (bundled with the Wii system) and Wii Play (bundled with a Wii remote, which is the main reason for purchasing it), the only game that has outsold Brawl is Super Mario Galaxy, which is a game that has been out significantly longer, was released prior to christmas (thus getting a sales boost), and released in all regions… and even then, Brawl has outsold Galaxy in both regions that it has been released in. This, in spite of Galaxy being a more “accessible” game, being released in time for the christmas rush, and well before Brawl, and being critically acclaimed. Galaxy, also, had all four keys, but Brawl had two things up on Galaxy – it was more core, and it had more content. These are minor keyrings that help boost the effect of the keys.
So remember, all of you Wii game developers – budget, timeframe, hype, and quality assurance are the essentials for making a successful Wii game, and these keys work as well for other developers as they do for Nintendo – the difference is, Nintendo uses all four keys most of the time, and thus have far greater success. You want to make huge profit from the Wii? Wield all four keys. It’s the only way. And please, don’t do as Ubisoft has done, and ignore all four keys in a drive to make more “casual” retard games – such an approach may give you slightly more profits over the very short term, but in the long term, a shovelware image is hard to shake, and will inevitably harm the chances of making decent profits off future titles.
